Valentine's Day

Well I feel that I am on a roll. Posting 3 days in a row! Too bad I am off to Atlanta today and not back for a week.

Today is Valentine's Day and I barely got to see my Valentine as he left for work early as I was still sleeping. I took the day off to travel to Atlanta to leave Jake with my mom while I catch a flight tomorrow morning for San Antonio for a conference for work.

I did leave a gift from Cheryls.com for my wonderful husband to open when he gets home.

He left some small valentines for us near the coffee pot this morning.

(Sorry I couldn't get the picture turned the correct way)

Jake and I made some Valentine's treats for my staff on Sunday. I have made these Pintrest treats with Rolos before. This time I used white/dark chocolate kisses and Peanut butter and Cherry m&ms.

Sad to be leaving my family for 4 and 1/2 days but I know I will be happy to see my old friends and coworkers after 3 years and eat some yummy mexican food.

The 411

So after not having enough time to blog I have suddenly been into linking up with other blogs. So today after seeing it posted in my friend Lynsey's blog I decided to link up with A Complete Waste of Makeup and give you the 411 on our blog.

1. Tell Us Why You Blog

To keep track of our lives. For the life of me as much as I love how cute scrapbooks are I can't find the time or energy to make one so this is a great way to remember milestones as Jake gets older.

2. Tell Us About Your Blog

I originally started to blog just weeks after my son Jake (who is now 3 1/2) was born. My husband works with a college football team and we were currently living in Texas when Jake was born so I wanted to keep friends and family up to date with pictures of Jake. Now its full of memories and so neat to look back at and reminisce as Jake grows up WAY too fast. I hope to use it in the future to tell friends, family and strangers about our path through Adoption.

3. Tell Us About You

I am a mother of one cute little boy, Jake. I currently work as a Member Engagement Director at a YMCA in Marion,NC. I have a batchelor's In Health Promotion and Education from the University of Georgia and a Master's of Healthcare Administration from UNCCharlotte. I met my husband while in Charlotte for grad school.

I have lived in 6 different states (Born in Chicago, then moved to GA, then off to Pittsburgh after undergrad, then Charlotte, NC for Grad School then Troy, AL after marriage and then Austin, TX for my husband's job and now finally have made my way back to Lenoir, NC (near App State). I currently commute almost an hour each way to work but really enjoy what I do as does my husband.

I love my college sorority friends (Alpha Gamma Delta:)) and a wonderful family and go back to Atlanta to visit fairly often. I love to coupon too. I am trying to get the hang of sewing.....its a work in progress:)

4. Tell Us About Your Job

See # 3 I enjoy working for the Y, only wish the commute wasn't as long. But know doubt I love having a job I can take my child to work at and learn about to swim and play soccer.

5. Tell Us About Your City

We live in a small town, Lenoir, NC. I am a city girl at heart and love getting back to the

larger suburbs when I can......

6. Tell Us about your favorite hobbies, activities and things to do

This might be a repeat but I love to coupon and find deals. I love to go to the local greenway near our house and run, walk and let Jake ride his bike. I like to blog and I am starting to learn how to sew:)

I LOVE the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Pitt Panthers and the Georgia Bulldogs!

I love football and think it was meant to be that I married someone who works for a football team.

Working Mom, Crazy Busy Life

I am for the first time linking up with Kelly's Korner - Show Us Your Life -Working Moms.

For those that our reading our blog for the first time I am a working mother of a 3 and half year old, named Jake and a wonderful husband Josh.

  I work as a Membership Director at a YMCA and commute almost an hour each way each day. My husband is over the Nike Account at Appalachian State University along with being the football equipment manager. Our life is BUSY. I am so lucky to work at a flexible job that my son can go take swimming lessons and soccer and I can bring him to work almost whenever I want. Both my husband and I have that luxury. I guess that is why both being working parents with long commutes (his is 40 minutes) works.

But the time constraints is why we are no longer looking to go through the Foster to Adopt program that we had started in January. We had started it with high hopes of adding to our family through going through DSS. Through going through the classes we have discovered that the time and effort that would be needed to be able to do "shared parenting" and taking the child to therapy possibly would not work with our life. We are so thankful to our neighbors and friends (pictured above) Emily and Jimmy. They have supported us in this process and watched Jake while we were in class.

My in-laws were also great about watching Jake for a weekend to help out too.

We are still open to ADOPT. We are going to go the direction of telling everyone and networking and hoping that GOD will lead us to a child when the time is right. So hopefully in the future I will post more about that. Jake goes to Kindergarden next year- I can't beleive it.

I am going to San Antonio this week to see old coworkers (who I haven't seen in 3 years!) and my old Y. I am SO excited. Then its off to the beach in early May for our annual beach trip.

With trips to Nashville for a girls weekend and hopefully a trip to Chicago to visit my grandparents it will be a BUSY year.

Because I don't get much time to update our blog I want to update about Jake. Jake is going through a defiant stage. He has decided to poop in his pants 3 times this week just out of the blue, almost on purpose. He LOVES Spiderman and wears his costume quite often, I bought his Spiderman house slippers just yesterday.

We are also about to welcome another nephew, Daylen!

These are Jake with his cousins so far.....Thea, TJ and Peyton.

Hopefully in the future we can add to the group!

Thanks for reading!



The New Year

I am finally catching up after Christmas. We had a great time as we first visited Rock Hill to see Josh's parents and sister. We then spent a week in Atlanta which was great because we got to relax and visit with family and friends. We even got to see Josh's Uncle Randall and his new wife Miriam.

This a picture of the New Years party Josh and I attended with my very dear friends and sorority sisters. Lots of fun was had.

We also got Jake a new full bed:) We refinished some furniture that Josh got from his grandmother. The room looks like a big kids room now, it seems like he was just in a crib.

We haven't has any snow here in Lenoir yet but we did make it up to Boone last weekend to get Jake's bed and he was able to see snow.

The last picture is of Spiderman. I made him a homemade superhero cape for him out one of my dad's old shirts that he can't wear since he has lost weight. He ran around the house this morning in this outfit.

I few updates about Jake: he was 36 pounds, not sure how tall he is. He is one of the most loving children always saying " I love you" to Josh and I.  Every night we read books and pray and now he gets in bed and says "Love you, see ya soon, night night"a couple of times before actually falling asleep.  He love to have us repeat syllables. So he will say " Mom say Dino (pause) saur." He is thriving in school, he is in the 3-4 year old room and has lots of fun.

He also wants a brother. Knowing its not in the cards biologically we have started the Foster to Adopt program through DSS. Our first class is Monday night and we are so thankful to our good neighbors and friends Emily and Jimmy for watching Jake for those 7 Mondays of Classes and for Josh's parents who are going to watch him on 2 Saturdays.

This will be an interesting experience.

Recruiting weekends have started with football, still need a few more coaches since some left for Western Carolina and some no longer work for the time. In the end I think it will be a good change.

Busy around here, get to go to San Antonio next month for work and I am SO excited to see old friends. We also have another nephew on the way, Daylen, who is due in about a month!



Holidays 2011

Jake and Santa - 3 years old

Making cookies for our 2 Christmas Cookie Exchanges

Jake and one of his best friends - Cole at the Gingerbread house making at the YMCA

Josh took both Jake and his friend Sydney to the gingerbread house making to have some fun.

Thanksgiving 2011

Jake all dressed up for Thanksgiving

Mom and Jake at the penguins

Jake loved to look at the penguins

Mom and Jake:)

My mom had gotten us tickets at the aquarium. Jake enjoyed the sharks and especially the penguins since he thought it was Happy Feet. We had my sister's inlaws over for Thanksgiving.

Jacobisms

Just so I don't forget I wanted to write some of the isms Jake has these days....

He currently refers to Bailey (the dog) as his sister and says that he is her brother. One say maybe he will have a brother or a sister one day....

We love the way he prays at night and says " A-MEN" and "TWO-NIGHT " We all three laugh so hard.

When I am 5

Jake thinks that when he is 5 the world will change. He will be able to drink coffee, ride a motorcycle, pretty much anything he wants, its the magical age. So when he asks to do something and I say no his response is "when I am 5 I will be able to".

He also thinks of Santa Claus and God along the same lines. He thinks they are both watching and tells us sometimes that God told him he didn't have to do whatever I am asking.

He pretends a lot at this age.

A funny story this morning was after Jake and Josh went to church they had to stop by a couple of places to find a newspaper for me for coupons. After the 3rd store Jake says to Josh "Daddy, this is ridiculous" and he wanted to go home. LOL.

Josh will be getting braces in the coming weeks so we will see how that goes.

We are playing Elon this weekend and I am headed off to Atlanta for the week of Thanksgiving and hopefully App will get a bye that week and join me later in the week.

Cousins, Halloween and Soccer

All of the cousins together (Jake 3, Thea 1, TJ 4 days, Peyton 1)

Jake got his first soccer medal

Most of Jake's soccer team (missing Clara)

Jake and his good friend Paxton (who use to bite him when they were babies)

We went Trick or treating with our neighbor and good friend Emily and her daughter. This is Jake and Sydney at Emily's mom's house. Sydney was Olivia the pig. Have to laugh at Jake's pose.

Jake is lately into saying he has his listening ears on. On Halloween he got a ton of candy and grabbed a tootsie roll pop as we got in the car on the way back to the YMCA. I told him not to open it and he did anyway. I asked him why he did that and if his listening ears were on. His response was that his listening ears are asleep. lol. I told him he better wake them up if he wants to go trick or treating.

I have found Jake's personality to be in many ways like mine. He hates scary stuff and he can find "scary people" in almost every movie. So he will watch the movie once and want to move on to the next one, thanks to Netflix this is possible. He is not a very adventerous kid, very loving and sensitive as I have said many times before.

He loves his teachers, especially Ms. Lisa who is very sweet and Ms. Jeanne. We made snack mix this year for all of our neighbors kids and football kid friends as well as his teachers.

Jake has grown about a half inch since his 3rd birthday 3 months ago. He is learning his letters well. Every night before bed and after bath we read, go through his letter flash cards (he can recognize A-F (upper and lower case) right now along with the words on those cards. and then we each pray.

Carter and Cole Photography

A friend of mine I met at a Hickory's mommy group over a year ago named Shellie took these pictures. I think she did a great job considering we paid 1/4 of what we have paid in the past for professional photography. We took the pictures in Hickory at Glenn Hilton park.

Stitches

Jake in the morning. He just got his stitches out yesterday. Recap: last week he ran into his friend Cayden and fell on a chair. After a trip to urgent care and the ER it resulted in 5 stitches. He did well, he just didn't like being "wrapped like a taco". You can't really tell since his hair hides it.

Today Jake was helping me clean. I would show him where the dirt was and he would suck it up with the vaccum.

Jake had his soccer pictures last weekend while I was at one of my childhood friend's weddings, Mike McCollum. Josh's parents were nice enough to drive him all the way to Marion so that he could get his first ever soccer pictures with his team. So cute!

Just for my memory he said something funny today. When Josh is out of town for football I let him sleep in my bed. He said " Mommy I get to sleep in your bed because you are my best friend". Just made me chuckle.

We are refinishing Josh's childhood furniture which was handed down from his grandmother so that we can put the pieces in Jakes room. Its a larger dresser and a full bed, I am excited to spruce them up and move Jake into normal size furniture. His clothes DO NOT fit his current dresser that still has the diaper change area built into the top of it. I will post pictures when we finish the project and move them in to the room.